moryonenn

[moryonenn]

Back in 1939, fossil collector Louis Grauvogel discovered a couple of reptile fossils in Middle Triassic-aged deposits (~247 million years old) in eastern France. A large preserved structure was noted above the animal's back, but for many years it was interpreted as an unrelated fish fin, insect wing, or plant frond.

It was only when the State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart acquired the specimens in 2019 that they were recognized as representing something very special: a long-sought-after relative of the bizarre and enigmatic Longisquama!

Mirasaura grauvogeli grew to around 30cm long (~1') and was, if anything, even stranger than its relative. It had humped shoulders, grasping limbs, and a bird-like head with large forward-facing eyes and a long pointed snout that was toothless at the front, probably used to probe for small invertebrates in cracks and crevices.

But most strikingly it had up to 20 tall structures overlapping along its back to form a sail-like crest. Although they were superficially feather-like in shape with preserved melanosomes that resemble those of birds, structurally they weren't feathers at all – but they also weren't modified scales. Instead these appear to have been an entirely novel type of skin appendage, made up of continuous sheets with a midline shaft and a corrugated texture.

The crest was probably used for visual display, and 80 additional fossils of isolated crest structures suggest they were regularly shed and regrown.

Along with Longisquama, Mirasaura appears to have been an early member of the drepanosaur lineage – a group of wonderfully weird tamandua-like reptiles whose evolutionary relationships are still disputed, with different studies currently recovering them as either a unique early offshoot of the diapsids or as archosauromorphs.

(Interestingly, a specimen of Drepanosaurus reportedly preserves some soft tissue on its back that may also be one of these strange new crest structures. Drepanosaurs just keep on getting weirder and weirder and I love them.)

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References:

Renesto, Silvo, et al. The taxonomy and paleobiology of the Late Triassic (Carnian-Norian: Adamanian-Apachean) drepnosaurs (Diapsida: Archosauromorpha: Drepanosauromorpha): Bulletin 46. Vol. 46. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, 2010. https://nmdigital.unm.edu/digital/collection/bulletins/id/1261/

Spiekman, Stephan NF, et al. "Triassic diapsid shows early diversification of skin appendages in reptiles." Nature (2025): 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09167-9

Wikipedia contributors. “Mirasaura” Wikipedia, 27 Jul. 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirasaura

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Artfight - Kot-aa for @translunaryanimus

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Direke for @moryonenn

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Artfight - Harlow for @aeriona

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Artfight - Ama for @the1andonlyvoid

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Artfight - Smoke for @lunaatmosphere

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For fers living outside their homeland, shoes often become necessary, but those who want to maintain their dexterity may decide that going without is an acceptable risk.

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Inspired by this post.

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Sunealit were introduced to Etera by human settlers several tens of thousands of years ago, not yet sapient, but close.

They feel instinctively territorial towards each other, but have a high social need, which was originally fulfilled by humans. When humans disappeared, the sunealit left behind died out everywhere except the boreal forest of north-west Uferius, where they had company from the domesticated proto-fers also left behind. Sunealit and fers co-evolved sapience over the a few thousand years.

Their general unwillingness to cooperate with each other restricts the ability of sunealit to form society, language or culture without association with some other kind of sophont. Driven by curiosity, they have migrated to other parts of their planet and are responsible for "uplifting" other sapient species.

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Fers usually prefer hammocks over any other kind of furniture.

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Two ngaru

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Mefilanya

Aiyawe's sister - she's an engineer on the same ship where Aiyawe is the navigator, which is a bit of a struggle when she's three feet tall and walks on her hands.

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Renkju sanbeka - the less populous of the two majority ethnicities of Ahmket.

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Threntavshu - a mid-sized predator from the Fawi rainforests, popular with Havu Islands exotic animal smugglers. They are mostly solitary in the wild and in captivity will usually act aggressively to all but one preferred person.

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A town in Ahmket, a peninsula at the southern end of Etera's sanbeka-majority region. Most sanbeka-built large settlements in Ahmket are built around a temple.

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Fer portrait